How to Make Internet Explorer 10 Compatible Websites

February 7, 2013

It’s been quite some time since Microsoft launched Windows 8 in the month of October, 2012. And along with Windows 8, Microsoft Internet Explorer 10 made its debut in the web arena. However, many web developers were well aware of what it is and how it has been developed, as it was available under the ‘Preview Release’ for quite a long time before its official release. But there are enthusiasts who aren’t aware of what it takes to make an Internet Explorer 10 compatible website, and that’s what made us write this post.

Initially you might not notice any change in the overall structure of IE 10, but it’s one of those powerful web browsers that supports most of the HTML 5 tags and Cascading Style Sheets 3 modules. Some of the HTML 5 tags & attributes and CSS3 modules are; Video, Sandbox, Spellcheck, Forms, 3D Transformation, Gradients, Transitions, Fonts, Animation, Text, etc. But still there are lots of things that you need to work on to make your website completely compatible with Internet Explorer 10. Given below are the best ways that will empower you to build flawlessly compatible websites for IE 10.

It’s a JavaScript-based testing application developed by Microsoft. It analyzes the websites and look for the interaction patterns, which can result in technical glitches, and once it finds them, it reports them automatically. Compact Inspector allows the developer to recognize the problems in quick time by bypassing the process of memorizing all the available documents.

To demonstrate how this awesome tool works, some known compatibility patterns have been utilized in the tooltip script used for the CI page. Once you reach the Compact Inspector page, try and use the given tool to find the issues available on the page. For this, you just need to click on the CI widget fixed on the top right-hand corner of the page. However, if you want to check this tool on any other page of your choice, just place this script “<script src=”http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/HTML5/CompatInspector/inspector.js”></script>” before all other scripts that are used on the page you want to run the test on.

If you find any issues within your page then you need to click on the “Verify” checkbox and refresh the page to replicate the predictable behavior for the time being. Moreover, it would be better if you focus on one issue at a time or else it may become complex for you. But yes, you can also “Verify” multiple issues in one go. And to troubleshoot this completely, you need to continue this procedure unless the provided tooltip starts functioning efficiently.

The ‘Internet Explorer 10 Compatibility Cookbook’ has been designed to make web developers aware of the changes in IE 10, which might have a negative impact on web applications that are developed keeping the previous IE variants in mind. As many changes have been introduced in Internet Explorer 10, which make it act in accordance with the industry standards, and the rest of the changes are implemented to improve its overall performance and consistency.

The ‘IE 10 Compatibility Cookbook’ includes info about the changes introduced in different segments which involves features, and illustrate general tools and guidance. It also showcases certain features that are either deprecated or completely removed.

How a web browser will render your website largely depends on its defined document compatibility. So you have to be more precise while informing the browser what to expect, and once you do that, it will result in a better web experience for your visitors. As far as the HTML5 Doctype is concerned, it’s pretty simple than what it used to be for previous HTML versions. And to make you aware of it, here it is;

<!DOCTYPE html>

Once you do that, the standard defined by you triggers the standards mode in IE version 9 and 10, and it also does well in Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.

Additionally, you should not use “X-UA-Compatible” Meta tag on your web pages or drive a custom HTTP header via web server.

While making websites you can render properly on IE 10 (with HTML5), you must not forget that there are people who still use older versions of web browsers that aren’t compatible with HTML5 and CSS3. Considering the same, you should use ‘Modernizr’ for browser feature detection rather than using the JavaScript based UA sniffing method. Modernizr is a Javascript library that offers better approach in feature detection. The main work of this awesome JavaScript library is to detect the accessibility of native execution for next-gen Web technologies.

Once you add a reference to Modernizr in your web pages, it offers four distinguished features, which are:

An all-inclusive list of features supported that is smartly added to your semantic html markup, which facilitates conditional CSS definitions.

A JavaScript object which assists in script-based feature detection.

All new HTML5 tags that are used on your web pages get added to the DOM at run time, for the benefit of IE version 8.0 and previous IE browsers.

A script loader for conditionally loading polyfills into your webpages.

Microsoft, first introduced the support for Cascading Style Sheets, Level 3 media queries in IE9, with which the element styles including font-size or margins transforms depending on the device screen size. However, with IE10 comes the support for CSS3 Media Queries Listeners, and it uses that along with JavaScript to adapt to the changes in the device screen sizes on which the web page is being browsed.

With Media query listeners the IE10 has got two new capabilities, which are listed below:

The IE10 has got some advanced features, which includes the support for touch input and metro style apps. With this, browsing websites and web apps has become more interactive and fun. However, it’s always necessary to ensure that your website works smoothly and handles the touch input quite efficiently. And to make that possible, Microsoft has introduced the Windows Developer Preview, with which the web developers can now make sure that their websites work efficiently with touch, and build the foundation for powerful end-user experience that makes the most of advanced input technology like, multi-touch and gestures.

With this blog posts we have tried to cover as much as possible keeping the length of the post in mind. However, if you need more information on how you can make your websites compatible with IE 10, then you must read the entire Internet Explorer 10 guide for web developers, which can be found here.

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